Last year, TechCrunch50 was an enormous showcase for startups to present their idea to venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and the press. This year, it’s even bigger.

Andrew Mager will be liveblogging this event from Monday through Wednesday. He'll try to writeup all 50 startups, plus some from the demo pit.

Captions and photos by Andrew Mager

The demo pit is warming up. Qik’s booth.

Video search engine CastTV.

Seesmic is here. Think of it as a video Twitter.

Social search startup SearchMe is taking a group photo.

There are lots of goodie bags for the press and presenters.

Microsoft brought its Surface computer.

Fish were swimming in Microsoft's Surface computer.

Lots of fun Microsoft schwag.

Tired of listening to startup pitches? Rock out with Rock Band.

Jason Calacanis arrives. They are playing Kanye West on the stereo.

The presenter’s stand is fully equiped with the best gear.

Calacanis chats with Google’s Marissa Mayer.

Blogger Calley Nye came up from LA to do some interviews and help out with the conference.

Presentations begin.

Meghan Asha from Non-Society is livestreaming the event on Qik.

Arrington consults with TechCruncher Erick Shonfeld.

Hangout Industries: “Where MySpace becomes my place” It’s a digital playground. Imagine a virtual house with you and your friends. You can customize your avatar with shirts from Threadless.com, streaming from the Internet. If you like the shirt, you can click “Buy”.

Blah Girls: What is it?

Blah blah blah is a dynamic interactive celebrity pop culture environment. It’s designed for teenage girls. It’s a blah blah blog. It’s gonna bring you the most up to date celebrity trends and gossip.

It’s a true collaboration between Silicon Valley and Hollywood. It’s an interactive hub for all things celebrity.

We understand that the web is not a passive playground. Every piece of content we put out will be interactive.

TweeGee: The future of social activities for kids 8-12. Content, gaming, social networking… you name it.

Marissa: I really liked Hangout, I thought they had a lot of cool merchandise coming in.

Aston Kutcher: It’s a video so it can go anywhere. YouTube will be launching the first episode of Blah today.

Farber: One of the challenges of Blah girls may be interactivity. It sounds like a good idea, but maybe the name isn’t memorable.

Angel investor Ron Conway

They are livestreaming the event on TechCrunch too

CNET’s Kara Tsuboi interviews Calacanis.

The guys from The Web Service. They host your data and help you control it.

Dotspots:

It is a symantic annotation layer. Imagine the wisdom of crowds… everywhere. Our first release is focused on the news. This is a browser plugin that follows you on the web, and remembers your preferences.

Angstro
News about your network. Business news about the people in your companies.

It’s great to have an online professional network, but it’s not always as interesting.

Robert Scoble

LiveHit:

A speech was given about LiveHit, but I didn’t understand it at all. It seemed way too thought out and almost like MySpace.

StockMood: Turning the news into numbers. Easily analyze stocks and see where their “mood” is.

Marissa Mayer from Google

Google News is launching millions of articles from old newspapers today. The technology behind it is the same that is used for Google Books.

We all sang happy birthday to Google.

Isreali tech entrepreneur Yossi Vardi gave some of the most valuable commentary.

Girls from Gazaro pose with Larry Chaing of Asse9.com.

Yahoo! sent some people to show off BOSS, but they look pre-occupied.

Norton is showing off it’s new Internet Security 2009 product.

If you gadgets aren’t charged, there are plenty of stations to juice up.

Gordon Peters from SocialCash came all the way from DC to be here. Pictured with Shira Lazar.

SocialCash funds startups and literally gives them a debit card with cash on it. They will it up as needed.